Jump to content

[SOLVED] New main drive, not finding Applications now


Recommended Posts

Last weekend, I swapped my primary drive in my Trash Can Mac Pro to a new one. It went swimmingly.

 

Alfred no longer finds anything in my /Applications folder.

 

I've tried: Rebuilding macOS Metadata, Clear Application Cache, removing and readding the directory to my settings. It's still not finding any of my Apps.

 

What am I missing?

Link to comment

@mikejandreau Could you go through the indexing troubleshooting steps here?

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/indexing/

 

In particular, if you follow step 4, once you get to Terminal, do you see "Indexing enabled" or any error message relating to indexing?

 

Can Spotlight find the apps and open them?

 

If you install the Metadata tool (https://cachefly.alfredapp.com/tools/AlfredMetadataTool_v1.1.zip) and drag in some apps, is their metadata complete? (Paste the output here so that we can help you further)

 

Cheers,
Vero

Edited by Vero
Fixed the indexing link for posterity... :)
Link to comment

Hey @Vero

 

That URL redirects to https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/indexing/mdls/ so I don't see a step 4 there to try.

 

I did re-enable Spotlight in Bartender and it's not finding any of my Applications either, so something's amiss there.

 

I ran some checks on that, and it looks like Spotlight indexing and searching is disabled on the new drive:

/:
	Indexing and searching disabled.
/System/Volumes/Data:
	Indexing and searching disabled.

The normal commands to get it running aren't working, but I can't figure out why. I'll contact the manufacturer of my new drive and see what they say.

 

Also the Metadata tool can't get Metadata for any of my apps. The ones I tested come back with "Unable to obtain metadata for this file!". So something's amiss here.

Edited by mikejandreau
Link to comment

As usual, I spent half an hour trying to re-enable Spotlight on the new drive in Terminal, fighting everything along the way.

 

Come to find out, there's a setting that for some reason was running against the new Drive:

 

image.png.9d6de4fee12b503d360f21c95697d4de.png

My new drive _was_ list there. Removed it. Rebuilt the cache in Alfred and voila, magic.

 

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction @Vero!

Link to comment
  • vitor changed the title to [SOLVED] New main drive, not finding Applications now

Hi. I would just like to add that I am experiencing the exact same problem(s) as OP, & they also persist throughout various troubleshooting & diagnostic techniques. Moreover, my troubles actually extend further than just the aforementioned broken search in Alfred, & in fact have now wrecked havoc on my stored Snippets and broader clipboard history functionality via Alfred, by far my single most frequent & mission critical Alfred feature.
 

In addition to the malfunctioning Alfred Search issue & the Clipboard/Snippet  woes detailed above, the same mysterious  culprit (presumably, although it could perhaps be a completely separate &/or unrelated issue)  has completely broken Alfred’s ability to sync b/t my Macs via the previously viable & reliable method of storing Alfred’s prefs folder in Dropbox. As most of you can imagine, the totality of the carnage has (only temporarily, I still hold out hope) rendered Alfred completely useless/obsolete for me, which as most of you can also quite easily deduce is a major problem given the several dozen to HUNDREDS of times I invoke Alfred for so much of my core tasks & operations.    
 

I was surprised (& disheartened) to discover virtually no documentation describing the issues I am experiencing in either Alfred’s published guide or Tutorials, nor even in the troubleshooting pages, save for the cautions against iCloud or Google in lieu of Dropbox for reliable prefsync/in different machines/iterations of Alfred installed on them, & that is how I came to bestow upon you all this imminently unsolicited and apparently improbably unique dissertation of dilemma. 
 

The last thing I will add for now is that unfortunately the eventual culprit/solution as documented here for OP does not apply to my issue(s), as I have no entries of Alfred on any such similar (nor identical) fields or block lists, & also Spotlight is properly indexed for my machines/OS’s and is experiencing none of the problems in it’s search function (most specifically noted & tested in Application search queries, as that is what I use it for the vast majority of the time). 
 

In closing, I’ll save us all a bit of time by further mentioning that the issue does not appear to be caused by the “usual suspects” of Mojave & Catalina, they being the expanded Gatekeeper/SIP “quarantine” flags  & Catalina’s more recent further hardening by way of the enhanced code signing restrictions & requirements. So I am truly stumped. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am approx 40% through the tedious & antithetical workaround of rebuilding each iteration of Alfred from scratch, MANUALLY, via the humiliating copy/paste method (& via quite a bit of completely manual input, the very admission of which surely illustrates the depth of my desperation & the scope of impairment it has leveled upon me. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve attempted to solve this conundrum via direct query upon Alfred’s search input field... but thankfully Alfred still can via his usage tracking, and thus the irony is not lost on either of us, lol) 

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...